Tonight's forecast: sky not falling

TONIGHT'S FORECAST: SKY NOT FALLING

A FEW YEARS back the House Republican Study Committee, a research group sponsored by some conservative Republicans, drove Hill Democrats crazy by assembling a list of far-out, left-wing, even marginally disloyal Democratic comments on American foreign policy. Now the House Republican Research Committee (sponsored by the GOP leadership) is having fun with a paper called "But the Sky Didn't Fall,' an assemblage of Democratic predictions about the economy under Reagan. Some highlights:

In April 1981 the House Democratic Caucus argued that "It is foolhardy to try to combat inflation with a massive across-the-board tax cut whose immediate effect would be to make it much worse.'

By 1982, inflation had fallen to 3.9 per cent from the Carter double-digit rates.

In the Democratic convention keynote address that made him a presidential contender for 1988, Mario Cuomo told his audience to "ask those Republican investment bankers' what interest rates will be "a year from now,' implying that if they dared tell the truth the country would terminate the Reagan Administration.

Exactly one year later the prime interest rate had fallen from 13 per cent to 9.5 per cent.

Uncounted Democrats protested Reagan's free-market energy policies. Democratic Representative Ike Skelton insisted that natural-gas prices would "go through the ceiling' as a result of the partial decontrol completed in 1985.

They dropped.

Representative Ron Dellums predicted $1.80-a-gallon gasoline (Senator Howard Metzenbaum plumped for $2) as a result of decontrol.

Within two years the average price had dropped five and a half cents, despite continued inflation.

One of Gary Hart's "new ideas' was that the Reagan Administration was sacrificing the American economy to OPEC.

According to the World Almanac, between 1981 and 1984, oil imports from OPEC countries dropped by more than a third.

The juiciest quotations are those that show Democratic leaders all but praying that Reaganomics would precipitate an economic collapse. In late 1982, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan opined that the economy was "on the edge of a world crash.' Tip O'Neill in February 1983: "Tight money, trickle-down tax cuts, and cruel budget cuts have brought the economy of the greatest nation in the world to its knees.' Walter Mondale in May 1983: "The evidence of recovery is ambiguous at this time.' (You can't blame a guy for trying.)

By the end of 1982, recovery had already started. GNP growth reached 3.7 per cent by the end of 1983, five and a half million jobs were created from 1982 to 1984, and 1984 GNP growth totaled 6.8 per cent

Photo: "Yes, I'm the chairperson. What can I do for you?'

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